1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of prescription drug printers; and more particularly, to a prescription drug printer which utilizes drug verification indicia having a colored pictorial representation of the prescribed drug.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recent developments in pharmaceutical research have developed a large and ever-expanding body of drugs to treat a large variety of medical conditions. Each year hundreds of thousands of prescription drugs are prescribed by physicians around the world for the treatment of their patients. The process usually involves the following steps. After a physician has evaluated and diagnosed the medical condition of his patient, he selects an appropriate drug, if necessary, for the treatment of the patient. The physician then writes a prescription in order for the patient to obtain the drug. Writing the prescription usually involves the physician handwriting the name of the drug, the dosages, and the instructions for taking the drug onto a sheet of paper from a prescription drug pad, and then signing it. The patient then takes this document to a pharmacy where it is handed over to the pharmacist on duty. The pharmacist then reads the prescription, handles any issues regarding patient health insurance, checks for dangerous complications caused by drug interactions, and then fills the prescription. The prescription is then retrieved by the patient, whereupon the patient begins to take the drug, following the instructions from the physician, which usually accompanies the prescription drug by way of a label affixed to the device that holds the drug.
Because many physicians have poor or otherwise illegible handwriting, there exist numerous instances where the pharmacist who is filling the prescription has trouble reading and understanding what drug the physician has prescribed. Because of the heavy work load and time pressures faced by many pharmacists, hasty decisions are occasionally made as to the interpretation of the physician's handwriting without contacting the physician in order to verify these conclusions. The end result is that many times the pharmacist fills the prescription with a different drug than was instructed by the patient's physician. Taking the wrong drug can be life threatening. Unfortunately, the patient has nothing with which to verify that the drug received from the pharmacist matches the original prescription drug form signed by the physician. The patient only receives one copy of the prescription form, which he must then remit to the pharmacist and which he does not get back or ever see again after he picks up the drug.
Prescription drug verification is a major problem affecting both the pharmacist and the patient. Information relevant to attempts to address these problems can be found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,372,681; 4,696,954; 4,732,411; 4,918,604; 5,048,870; 5,390,796; 5,597,995; 5,752,723; 5,839,836; 5,884,273; 5,905,652; 5,961,151; 6,036,017; 6,036,231; 6,149,518; 6,330,351; 6,386,367; 6,550,618; and 6,649,007, as well as U.S. Patent Application Nos. US 2003/0189058; US 2003/0189732; US 2003/0193185; and US 2003/0214129. However, each one of these references suffers from one or more of the following disadvantages: (i) the verification indicia is not created by the prescribing physician, but instead by the pharmacist; (ii) only one sheet of paper having the verification indicia is created, so that there exists no additional copy to use as a receipt for the patient to retain; (iii) the verification indicia does not include a substantially similar colored pictorial representation of the prescription drug, or alternatively an exact replica; (iv) there exists no storage means by which to store the prescription drug form information for each patient the physician treats; (v) there exists no translation means by which to create a foreign translated version of the verification indicia and other information for inclusion on the patient receipt.
For the foregoing reasons, there remains a need in the art for a prescription drug printer that prints out a prescription drug form as well as a patient receipt, both of which include clear textual identification of the drug along with a substantially similar colored pictorial representation of the drug, and preferably an exact size replica, so that the pharmacist can verify that the drug he is filling is indeed the same drug that was prescribed by the physician and, also, so that the patient can verify that the drug he is receiving from the pharmacist is the same drug that was prescribed by his physician.